Life in Print

My great grandmother was 23 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929. That year she was a live-in nanny and I asked her about her work when I learned about the crash in high school. I wanted to know if the textbooks were correct; that some people went crazy in mass hysteria, and if some even jumped out of windows in fear of being poor. She laughed and said, “I was poor the day before the market crashed, I was poor the day it crashed, and I was poor the day after the crash, but my family never went without a meal and I never went without a job.”

Grammie told me that her boss, the lady of the house, told her that she was sorry to let her go, but that they could afford to pay her a little to wash their laundry. Suddenly my great grandmother saw an opportunity. She didn’t see this as the end of the world, but instead as a chance to go home to her three children, whom she only saw on the weekends, and survive, if not thrive. Grammie made sure to stop at every house on that street and pick up their laundry. She already had a flourishing garden, and although my family didn’t always have meat to eat, they had fresh fruit and vegetables. Grammie said not only did she make the same amount of money, some weeks she made more, and she showed her gratitude by leaving bundles of fresh produce atop clean loads of laundry.

This story is significant because it taught me that history is rarely recorded from multiple perspectives and that I was raised to be self-sufficient. During this quarantine, when we wanted haircuts we cut our hair at home. When I wanted a manicure, I took my time and did my nails at home. What we did not, and will not do, is spike the curve by protesting social distancing’s limit to luxuries. What good are a fresh cut and a full set if the customer or service provider is too sick to enjoy the work or profit? When did cosmetic wants supersede the basic human needs of shelter, food, and health? Do people seriously care more about their roots showing than they do symptoms that can lay dormant in children for up to four weeks? According to newly opened beaches, restaurants, and protest placards, the answer is yes, and that is terribly sad.

Four days into attempts to revisit normal, the mayor of Seoul, South Korea, shut down the city’s bars after dozens of new cases of COVID 19 sprang up, but we cannot expect such alacrity from our government because public health is not a national priority given the reaction of some states, who undoubtedly take their orders from the top down. This is a country where a governor threatens legal action against sovereign tribes’ right to protect themselves because she is concerned more about trade access to public roads. Did she not know that reservations have roads that lead somewhere or that tribes are sovereign governments? Or is this more about the optics and how small countries in her state are doing more for the good of all her people than she is?

In order to make this uncomfortable situation work, we have to prioritize the things we swear we so desperately want versus what we actually need. No toilet paper roll ever saved anyone from this pandemic but yet we hoarded it like it was water, food, or better yet, a vaccine. No stylish hairdo looks as good as a properly filtered mask and short nails are in a word, sanitary. Please stop fighting online and in crowded streets about wants over needs. This behavior is silly, selfish, and ultimately dangerous.